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Vandals run riot in Russia's science cities

The science cities of the Soviet Union are in a ‘sorry state’, reported
Zhores Medvedev, during his leave-taking lecture at the National Institute
for Medical Research in London last week.

Medvedev, a commentator on Soviet science for some 25 years, was deprived
of his Soviet citizenship in July 1973 while on a study visit to the NIMR.
His visit lasted 18 years. Last year, however, his Soviet citizenship was
restored, and last month he visited the Joint Nuclear Research Institute
at Dubna, to tell Soviet scientists how Britain copes with a market economy.

At his retirement speech at the NIMR, Medvedev delivered a lecture on
‘The Rise and Fall of Soviet Science’. In the 1970s, Soviet science seemed
set on a course of excellence with unlimited funding, he said. But it had
‘grossly wasted its opportunities’. Money had been lavished on expensive,
often marble-clad, institutes.

The Soviet Academy of Sciences had spent vast sums on a 25-storey administrative
building. Now the money has run out, the central, All-Union Academy has
collapsed, and the State Committee for Science and Technology has been abolished.

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Boris Yeltsin’s Russia does not have enough money to support the vast
network of scientific establishments on its territory. As many as half of
the scientists in the former Union face redundancy in the coming year, said
Medvedev.

The science cities have been particularly badly hit. They were a legacy
of President Khruschev’s decision to ban the building of new scientific
institutes in Moscow. The scientists initially liked the idea. They were
assured of housing considerably better than the average Soviet citizen’s.
Scientific new towns sprang up at Akademorodok (near Novosibirsk), and all
around Moscow – at Ruschino, Obinsk, Zelenegrad and Dubna. All were basically
single-employer towns: everyone worked for the science sector, either directly
or in the supporting services.

Now, says Medvedev, there is no money either for research or to pay
the salaries of the support staff. Laboratories are locked, and the scientists
are on unpaid leave.

Dubna, the nuclear research facility founded in 1956 as the Eastern
bloc’s answer to CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, has been
dealt a double blow. First, the former socialist countries pulled out, taking
their money with them; now the collapse of the Union has deprived it of
funds. New apparatus stands idle, while machines under construction, including
a new collider scheduled for completion in 1993, have been mothballed. There
is no money to pay the scientists or even the service personnel, Medvedev
said. An even more acute problem, he said, is the ‘total absence of foreign
currency to import reagents and spare parts and to renew subscriptions to
foreign journals’.

Meanwhile, in the streets of the science cities, for which no one ever
thought to provide less intellectual facilities such as cafes, cinemas and
the like, gangs of bored and frustrated teenagers run riot.